Author, Teacher, Geek Pundit

Santa’s Odyssey: A Postscript

First of all, let me deeply thank everyone who has stuck around with me for the last year as I took Santa Claus on his little journey through the different holidays. It has long been my tradition to write a new story for every Christmas season, but obviously, this was a little different. Several years ago, I struck upon the idea of telling a Santa Claus story that tripped through all the holidays over a course of a year. (An idea, I don’t mind telling you, directly inspired by the classic Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale graphic novel Batman: The Long Halloween.) I didn’t try it before because, although I liked the idea, I didn’t really have a story to go with it. This is a common problem for writers and, in fact, some of them manage to build an entire career without ever finding a way to solve it.

For me, the tipping point came when I thought about modeling Santa’s story on Homer’s epic. It wouldn’t be a direct, point-for-point correlation, but I liked the idea of Santa being away from home, linking certain of the holiday icons to different points in the journey of Odysseus, and having Mrs. Claus play the Penelope role in my little drama. And although I didn’t originally intend it that way, the trick of writing more or less in “real time” allowed me to have a little fun, throwing in topical references and using rare events like the 2018 Easter/April Fool’s Day match to my advantage. No matter what changes happen in future drafts of this story, I think I’ll have to keep it set in the year 2018.

Oh yes, there will be future drafts. That’s the other thing about writing this story the way I did, guys — there was no opportunity to go back and revise as I went along. Normally, the writer has had a chance to go back and tweak things in chapter one after the final chapter is written, but the conceit of this story did not allow for that. So what you read this year was, in essence, a first draft. It has rough edges, there are characters I want to develop much more, and I’m sure there are continuity errors a-plenty that I need to address. You’ll see this story again someday, after it’s ready.

But you’ll see it again just a little sooner than that too. It’s not over yet, you see. Not quite.

There’s still one holiday left in 2018. And what better time than New Year’s Eve for an epilogue?

Merry Christmas, everybody. See you on the 31st.

Oh — and if somehow you’ve read all this and have no idea what I’m talking about, start at the beginning!

On Christmas morning, as Santa Claus and two of his helpers returned to the North Pole, they came under attack by a group of holiday Icons angry that Claus was monopolizing the holiday glory. This year, stranded in the human world with no way home, Santa will be forced to take on the tasks for every other holiday — the Icons are on strike.